Charlie Stross In Second Life: The Immersion Advantage

Recently, science fiction luminary Charlie Stross appeared in Second Life's Extropia City for a wide-ranging conversation on his novels and the ideas that inspired them.  Here's the illustrated chat transcript, edited down to a nicely readable form.  (In SL he's "Autopope Writer".) While most celebrity appearances in Second Life are conducted with VOIP or even by phone call, SL's Extropians have steadfastly bucked the trend, preferring the immersion of in-world chat.  For eloquent authors like Stross, the advantage of that method shines through in excerpts like this, where he talks about science fiction's move toward cyberpunk:

Back in the 1920s to 1970s, SF was about increases in delta-V — acceleration, speed, travel. It mimicked the modernist obsession with transportation and communication. But in the 1970s we hit an energetic wall — we couldn’t go any faster.  Meanwhile, the IT revolution was under way. Moore’s law gave us a different exponential/sigmoid progress from that of aerospace...  Neal Stephenson noticed. Vernor [Vinge] noticed. I noticed. And that’s why I’m writing a different type of SF — for a type of SF reader whose metric for analysing progress is different.

Great stuff you're only likely to get through the written word in-world.  Read it all.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

heck headline spelling, Hamlet... advatnage?

[Laetizia Coronet]

Check, with C... sheesh, just when you correct someone ;-)

[Hamlet Au]

Checked my heck spelling, thanks!